The Year of Jubilee: God's Call for A New Age.

Dear Fellow Church Members,                      

         Our passages for Sunday are from Leviticus 25 and 2 Timothy 1.  From Leviticus, here are verses 25-28:

 ²⁵ “If anyone of your kin falls into difficulty and sells a piece of property, then the next of kin shall come and redeem what the relative has sold. ²⁶ If the person has no one to redeem it but then prospers and finds sufficient means to do so, ²⁷ the years since its sale shall be computed and the difference refunded to the person to whom it was sold, and the property shall be returned. ²⁸ But if there are not sufficient means to recover it, what was sold shall remain with the purchaser until the year of Jubilee; in the Jubilee it shall be released, and the property shall be returned.

 And from 2 Timothy 1, from our passage a few weeks ago, verses 3-6:

 ³ I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. ⁴ Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. ⁵ I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. ⁶ For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands, 

          This Sunday begins for us a Year of Jubilee.  We take this from the year of Jubilee set in the Law of Moses.  In Leviticus 25, a legal reset was established that every fifty years the people returned to the land God had given to them.  There were already Sabbath years, every seventh year, as a year of rest for the land to lie fallow.  But after seven sets of seven years, there comes the fiftieth, a year of rest AND reset.

          God gives the Promised Land to His people.  It will be given tribe by tribe, family by family-each on their own piece of God's land (the tribal survey is described at the end of the book of Joshua).  The land can be bought, sold, traded, moved about, but with the provision that every fifty years, everybody returns to their portion of God's gift.  Read the Book of Ruth in light of the verses given from Lev. 25 above, do you see a Year of Jubilee in action.

          In 2 Timothy, Paul calls upon Timothy, the third generation of believer, as his successor in ministry.  In Jesus, the promise of Jubilee, God's grace to us forever, finds fulfillment in the generations of Timothy, foreshadowing the generations coming down to us.   

          That is at the heart of Sunday’s kickoff of a year of Jubilee for this church.  Recognizing the generations that have built this church are not only its legacy, but are, as the people of Israel were, called back to the gift of God’s church.  The generations that have built this church are the foundation not only for their families, but of the new families who will find God’s Heart among us in the future.    

          It is time to renew, to rekindle, to step into God’s light once again.  Jesus’ message of hope is needed now more than ever.  This Sunday, we gather together to carry that light boldly forward into a Jubilee of FPC Merchantville’s ministry.  Come and join us.

 

Joyfully,

Pastor Peter